April 15, 2009

We’re busy cramming for an exam on Thursday afternoon so no big blog posts from us until then. For now, here are some links we’ve been liking lately:

From Nuxa:

Etsy – Those of you who have never seen or heard of this online crafting phenomenon, run, don’t walk, to rifle through this gigantic cache of hand-crafted goods. You can find everything from painted signs to vintage clothing to Barack Obama’s face on a pair of earrings.

The Sartorialist – This well-known blog (recently profiled by Penny) showcases the personal style of random people they find on the street.

April 10, 2009

Allow me to point out that without the ellipsis, that would have read like “most testes.” I assure you that the writers of this blog are, as advertised, meninas (menina means girl in Portuguese– we never did clarify that) and do not possess any testes, let alone the most.

Anyway! Nuxa is at home baking delicious folare with her Mama while I am leisurely studying for an exam tomorrow, so I thought I’d take a little break (I haven’t started yet) and start the crafty/design portion of our blog. We’ve been planning to include lots of posts on pretty things we find, plans for decorating our new apartments, etc, but between school and everything else going on, we’ve put it on the back-burner until summer. You can look forward to seeing some nifty flea market finds, our inspiration for future homes, and a few (hopefully successful) DIY projects starting in May. Yay for fun content!

For the last two years, Nuxa and I have found ourselves forced to stay at school and study instead of being able to go home to celebrate Easter with our families. Some of our friends were in the same boat so we decided to host a potluck Easter dinner, complete with roast, asparagus, Portuguese sweetbread, and of course lots of wine. Since we’re always on a budget, our centrepieces last year consisted of wine bottles, our dishes, and our friend who was studying abroad for the semester– we set a place for my laptop and Skyped with him until he passed out due to too much cheap French wine.

It was a delicious dinner, but the table’s not all that aesthetically pleasing. Which is why, this year, in lieu of an actual dinner, I have compiled some cheap, easy, cute ideas to add some flair to your next cozy dinner party. They’re also ideal for brightening up an unused kitchen table.

April 5, 2009

We’ve been resume-writing, cover letter-composing meninas since January, and Nuxa has an interview coming up this week. Since we’ve both been doing this since we were 16, we aren’t clueless– but it’s still pretty stressful filling everything out and hoping it’ll all be enough to land us a well-paying, challenging, and preferably not soul-killing job.

But every system can do with some revamping, especially one that determines financial status. That is why we were thrilled to see Penny Plastic’s post on job-hunting, resume-building and interviewing tips. She really knows what she’s talking about, and she suggests quite a few things that we never would have thought of.

March 31, 2009

We try to be frugal meninas… but…

(Cartoon from Coco’s parents. They went to the trouble of scanning it because it reminded them so much of her.)

We’re both lucky enough not to be severely affected by the current economic climate, but being a student is pretty much the same situation as many people are dealing with now (albeit more temporary)– by April, all your summer money is gone and you’re trying to rely on the dregs of your freezer/cupboards.

To make matters worse, we both work on campus and our job ends next week. This is good, since it gives us the chance to study for exams, but bad, because the paycheques stop coming in.

Now, we’re certainly not the type of meninas from whom one would take financial advice– the sheer volume of shoes we have purchased in the last year certainly speaks to that.

But we are the kind of meninas who read blogs voraciously– the sheer volume of time spent procrastinating certainly speaks to that.